With so many adequate men around.
Poor me! myself so inadequate I found.

My inadequacies so bulky and wide.
Searched nooks and corners to hide.

Lying down on floor was red old mat.
Unaware what lies beneath many sat.

Crept towards the mat where it lied.
My inadequacies I decided to hide.

Between the red old mat and the ground.
While hiding mine, theirs hidden I found.

It took me years to realize it wasn’t just me, and that the labels for women are created by men’s "standards". I wasn’t a ****. But what does that even mean? Men use “equality” to manipulate women with their standard: its fun to experiment at the time, but the girl will always be remembered as "the girl who did that," in hometown suburbia. Who’s going to end up with a woman they did nasty things to? In traditional marriages, no one wants that kind of wife. In today’s corrupt society, no one wants to know their wife was raunchy and experimental.

But what about the girls who are like that? Can’t you imagine moving away? Moving away from mistakes and stigmas and just start over? The hypocrisy and judgment against experimental women and gay men is still happening today with the "man’s" standards—the holy, good-natured man’s standards. Why are there gender roles? Why are women a minority, the curious exploring people we are? Why deny humanity for power? But humans do it to animals too! So it’s not just among gender, it’s among species! On this earth we should live with animals, but we **** and eat them for power. They **** and eat each other too, but as the knowledgeable species we are, we should respect them for there is a reason we share this earth.

But the hostility with having power is what it is to be a man. That’s how it’s been all along. And in the world men aren’t the majority, so why are they STILL treated like one? THEY are the actual minority, but they still have power! Because of religion! Straight men—who wrote the religious texts— dismissed everyone else! Slavery has been around forever! Also think monarchy and royalty—among humans we’re equal, but the power of civilization and class status and material and monetary value goes against nature. Because religious texts prove how religion started the world. These religious ideas created by certain men of misogynistic, violent, racist, homophobic creatures manipulated! Why aren’t women respected in the holy books? BECAUSE MEN WROTE THEM! And that’s why *** is reserved for marriage in religion, because inadequacies and insecurities branch off of ****** experience and the uncertain nature of what comes with exploring various lovers. It’s complicated for everybody, but men like control because they are the ultimate pessimists.

And religion has its perks by providing the one answer throughout history: "why do we exist," but it’s completely sexist! And within the misogyny formed by the different cultures of various religious men, of an evolving species, they realized manipulation could cause them power. And feminism takes away from the religion! Women are optimists, but they’re impressionable by burdens! Civil rights and democracy and spreading-the-wealth for all humankind help! But money creates problems—including environmental—on and for our earth! But why is it sexist? Because throughout the world these particular different societies created by ignorant men are still letting this happen!

And with this power, they still control women! Equality for humankind starts with feminist movements! And when it comes to sexuality, whether gay or straight, what’s the big deal? Society! Because why are so many homosexuals punished, and why are so many cultures sub missing women? Why does **** and molestation still happen? There is no greater form of disrespect towards another person! But making a consequential decision to have ***, with anyone excluding a “good man,” as according to that society, most-likely founded by a group of men its wrong? Profits don’t exist, because no single person can understand what it is that created the universe.

And hetero-****** *** isn’t supposed to be nice, because it’s aggression towards the other gender and the determination of who won the battle: the gender of child. And that could be why psychology suggests that there is an under-lying ****** nature for fathers and daughters and mothers and sons. And there is: gender aggression. But the gender that actually creates the child is the woman, and knowing this, men have made us submissive because although they’re bigger in size and aggressive, women would be the dominant side. The curiosity of the female reproduction has been a subject of fear throughout the millennia.

Bisexuals who don’t pro-create, however, usually resent straight men unless their having attractions toward them. The philosophical possibilities of experimenting with everyone to know everything is frowned upon by on all governments founded by white men. Wars have been created and people have been slaughtered! There can be peace on earth! But everyone needs to unite and eliminate prejudices and stigmas and live as people naturally, and sexually. There is balance in this universe and "living organisms" are true examples.

Women and men reproduce, to create another part of a balance. The universe, however, is impossible to ever completely understand, and the possibility of understanding it is an idealistic facade. We don’t know why women and men balance out the way they do (with an occasional mutation among humankind), but it balances with the universe. But sexuality is the purpose and the weapon, the heaven and the hell, the good and the bad and the euphoria of possibility. It’s denied in society with a civilization where one certain type of group can be the best and create power. And this balance is the key to all knowledge achieved by biology to "attract to reproduce"/"win wars". That kind of war is not in our power as humankind.

Men are a species and women are a species. To be human is to be an element of the evolving universe. Homosexuality usually isn’t a threat because it provides understanding, but in this world ruled by men, it isn’t! To compare humankind to a basic principle of the universe, the atom, a woman is a proton and a man is an electron. "Mutations" are neutrons. The man has the negative, aggressive nature and women are usually kind-minded and nurturing. But in a society where sexuality defines women, women are up against each other.

People are an element in the universe, and we reproduce due to gender aggression, or realistically, physics. We’re recycled stardust, after all. The point of this hypothesis is to provide an ideal for Utopia, where everyone is bisexual, but men and women are forever reproducing. Everyone is "wild" but wise and having *** to pro-create and understand our kind. We are evolutionary atoms. And love is two very powerful charges reacting strongly in a sequence. That’s what the universe does, it expands and creates.

The products of Earth—topography, geology, history, anatomy, biology, philosophy, physics, chemistry, oceanography, zoology and psychology–expand and create as well. Maybe there is a Great Creator, but it’s not comparable to the negativity created in the religions dominating societies.  It’s essentially what created the entire universe, not just what’s on earth, and not just humans. Humans, animals, plants, weather, planets and stars are all recyclables. We on earth are equally products of the universe, and after we die we’ll become something else. But religion, humanity and science aside, something made this universe. Something made our life and ability to think with secrets and balance, and whatever it is, it’s a ******* creative.

Slowly she raised her tired eyes
and began to tally for me
my innumerable inadequacies.
I leaned back tired and shaken
ready to ******* bitter medicine.
There is no sadder statement said about me than the truth,
independence and self reliance present themselves as virtues
but i have come to realize they are the only things
that have led me to be as proud
and as lonely
as i truly am.
Is this all my fault?
Is it in fault,
that i wish i had followed sheep like and blissful
into the norm that breeds satisfaction
or at least some numb equivalent?
For all of you
I will smile,
Wave,
Glisten,
Grimace,
Weep,
and bare wide my yellowed teeth.
Because the bliss that we call freedom,
is just the most subconscious part of obedience.

Perplexed people of a politically polluted land,
Are uncertain of who they truly are.
Sons supporting freedom's fight, fathers seem lost,
Seeking meager gains with no gain in power.
Subjugation and forced order is in play,
Forgotten the episodes of cold blooded ******.
Rapes, intimidation and tormented nights,
All ignored, for they are not
our daughters or mothers.
No concern given to our neighbors strife?
Our humanity we sold, for positions in this land.
Strengthened the corrupted power at play,
Full of anarchy and devoid of mercy.
The foibles in name of government and development,
Oh Lord!Fill our fellows hearts
with compassion.
Open their eyes to the inadequacies,
Bring our nation back to consciousness.
©Perveiz Ali

I've never heard more people in my life insist they are good at something more than driving. Nearly every person I know has insisted to me that they are a great driver. And when its an off day? "I swear, most days I'm great though". I'm never quite sure if its because no one is often there to judge them but themselves, or if its hard for them to accept they are only adequate at something they do day in and day out.

As someone who has only ever held a permit myself, I am fascinated by this phenomenon. Its as if its unthinkable to accept that you're only okay or average or even bad at something everyone does. I've found similar results with cooking. Anytime I tell someone I'm good at it, they burst in with their own stories of their good cooking, though I never was comparing them.

I don't understand the inability to accept inadequacies. They are a part of who they are. Mind you, I conversely also believe to accept greatnesses. But Doesn't it diminish those greatnesses if you don't fully accept your misfalls?

Myself, as an easy example. I can't legally drive. I love science but hate research and laboratory processes. I can't stop myself from questioning math long enough to understand it. I get really obsessive about making lists, and I have to do them before doing things, even if they end up wrong. I write novels inefficiently, because I prefer to write them out of order, which ultimately tends to lead to wasted scenes. I hate citrus. I'm near addicted to weird things. I'm fiercely independent and protective of it. I like to stay up late and get up early and struggle with enjoying sleep.

But I have greatnesses. I am a wonderful writer, particularly realistic fiction novels. I am great at technical writing, because I love science but understand rhetoric and audience-driven communication. I am super intelligent artistically, and have a level of creative innovation and drive that baffles even me sometimes. I am wonderful at questioning everything and giving good insight. I am adaptable. I like vegetables.

I feel like accepting these inadequacies makes me inadequate. I think they make me human. I would never try to tell someone I'm good at driving. I'm not. But i hope to be passable. I want to get better to the point of making me a better, functioning person, but good? C'mon. Inflating myself won't make me better. It'll just make me bloated.

Sometimes being inadequate is kinda okay, as long as you have your own personal greatness too.

you're not going to read this, and why would you?*

it would be either
naive
or
stupid
of me to expect even so much as a text;
as if our separation implies the ******* of a proverbial
Berlin Wall* between us,
where less than a week ago we were the same *country,
our landscapes of rolling hills,
city skylines,
and forests
so overgrown
that only
slices
of sunlight
could parse the ever-greened canopy,
phasing into one another seamlessly.

We may have been our own provinces,
but aside from small street signs declaring
Welcome to Jen
and
Welcome to Kyran...
aside from separate cognitive centers of self-government
between
your shock-blue eyes and fleek eyebrows,
between
my navy-blue irises and grey,
sunken sockets,
we were a willing confederation of persons,
impulses,
                dreams,
                             ambitions,
                                              anxieties,
                                                              lo­ves,
                                                                ­        and betrayals---

In our past, and provisional separations,
it was your betrayal that pushed us both
into the doldrums of love-lost confusions
and self-hatred;
not that there would be much value
in assigning a blame
with hurt still attached,
because the point,
it seems to me,
was that we somehow made it through everything together.

There wasn't a personal adversity we didn't learn to conquer
---until I began to fade away from you--
lanky, thin, often broke, and depressed,
I retreated.

I cocooned myself in studies of the past and the present;
for some reason, despite my overwhelming love for you,
despite the unspoken commitment I had made
to you
in my head
so long after your second infidelity
when I realized I was finally over it
and that I loved you more than I'd ever loved anyone before
--and in ways I never could have foreseen--

I backed-off,
I fell back,
I disengaged,

and

I essentially abandoned you.

After your impulsive infidelities,
when you admitted you hadn't been
nor were you in your
"right mind,"
you promised you'd get better.

You saw councilors, therapists, psychiatrists,
and psychologists... and you did.

You really did get better.

You overcame all that had been pulling you so low and so far into the darker vicissitudes of irrationality.

And yet, when it came to my own faults,
inadequacies, and disengagement,
I lacked your courage.

I didn't even try to overcome them.
In my self-imposed screen-gazed solitude,
I often thought of how much I loved you;
of how I hoped you might just wait out my confused disengagement
like I forgave you for your betrayals which had,
in their times,
hollowed me out emotionally for months on end.

The thing is, you wouldn't have blamed me if I'd left you then.
You would have understood, and let me go,
regardless of the heavy pain in your solar plexus
and the hollow feeling in your heart.

Though it never came to that,
I now have the chance to do for you what you'd have done for me.

I don't blame you for leaving.

I understand,
and regardless of this heavy pain in my solar plexus
and the perceptive hollowing of my heart,
I will watch you as you go,
        I will wave,
I will live with the weight of regret and memory,
and remember what you wrote in a poem once
when we parted ways after your first infidelity.

Sitting in the university library, reading on Moses,
what went thru your head was

"closure feels more like i can go on without you, i’m glad i met you, however an emptiness drenched in self-regret will always remain."

Building Blocks (Spoken Word Poem)
5/15/2014

I played with legos when I was young.
What I didn't know was the value of those building blocks.
Putting tiny pieces of plastic together,
all different shapes, sizes, and colors.

For what?
For fun?
For structure?
For a challenge?
Because my mom told me to keep busy?
Or because that was how legos were supposed to work - together.

As I grew up, I gradually upgraded.
My legos got traded in for classmates,
for co-workers.
for bar buddies,
and even for the occasional stranger at the mall or movie theater.

They started telling their own stories:
About their first day at lego high school and making new friends.
About falling in love with their first lego boyfriend.
About going to lego prom and putting the pieces together at the after-party, if you know what I mean.
About getting dumped, but then landing their first job at the lego factory.
About shedding priceless limited edition lego tears, on stressful days.
About going through struggles where all they could do is pray to lego God.
About dreams of a nice big lego house with lego children someday.
About lego suicides, resulting from bullying in every worst kind of way.

Eventually it felt like I had opened up an expert level pack,
containing a variety so vast that I never would have guessed anybody could piece them all together.

These building blocks started to feel pretty heavy,
like bricks building a house,
I could only carry a couple in a fistful at a time.
Except they've been worn down from a life full of misuse.
Their colors faded,
edges jaded,
teeth serrated,
like an adapted mechanism for survival.
And what's worse - no mortar to piece them together.
because it all got burnt up.
A casualty of angry tempers' crossfire.
The constant collisions of verbal bullets bullying the building blocks,
bulldozing them over.
With the strength of slurs,
societies seems to blur,
all the inadequacies faced.

Without solidarity to support,
these building blocks are beginning to contemplate giving up.
But Stop!
But I don't like that.
I'll shout, "Hey little legos, remember the plan?
We should work together with your manual instructions in hand.
You were built with a scheme to be put together.
So in unison you can create an amazing structure to cherish forever."

Building blocks are resilient anyways.
Remember that time you left a lego alone?
Detached from its peers,
abandoned out on the carpet,
without the safety of its pre-fab box home?
Well the lego didn't seem to mind, I mean it turned out just fine.

Remember when you stepped on that seemingly small, insignificant lego?
Yeah, don't step on legos.
I'm sure you remember how much that ******* hurt your foot.

I've never heard more people in my life insist they are good at something more than driving. Nearly every person I know has insisted to me that they are a great driver. And when its an off day? "I swear, most days I'm great though". I'm never quite sure if its because no one is often there to judge them but themselves, or if its hard for them to accept they are only adequate at something they do day in and day out.

As someone who has only ever held a permit myself, I am fascinated by this phenomenon. Its as if its unthinkable to accept that you're only okay or average or even bad at something everyone does. I've found similar results with cooking. Anytime I tell someone I'm good at it, they burst in with their own stories of their good cooking, though I never was comparing them.

I don't understand the inability to accept inadequacies. They are a part of who they are. Mind you, I conversely also believe to accept greatnesses. But Doesn't it diminish those greatnesses if you don't fully accept your misfalls?

Myself, as an easy example. I can't legally drive. I love science but hate research and laboratory processes. I can't stop myself from questioning math long enough to understand it. I get really obsessive about making lists, and I have to do them before doing things, even if they end up wrong. I write novels inefficiently, because I prefer to write them out of order, which ultimately tends to lead to wasted scenes. I hate citrus. I'm near addicted to weird things. I'm fiercely independent and protective of it. I like to stay up late and get up early and struggle with enjoying sleep.

But I have greatnesses. I am a wonderful writer, particularly realistic fiction novels. I am great at technical writing, because I love science but understand rhetoric and audience-driven communication. I am super intelligent artistically, and have a level of creative innovation and drive that baffles even me sometimes. I am wonderful at questioning everything and giving good insight. I am adaptable. I like vegetables.

I feel like accepting these inadequacies makes me inadequate. I think they make me human. I would never try to tell someone I'm good at driving. I'm not. But i hope to be passable. I want to get better to the point of making me a better, functioning person, but good? C'mon. Inflating myself won't make me better. It'll just make me bloated.

Sometimes being inadequate is kinda okay, as long as you have your own personal greatness too.

There's a difference between looking and
seeing.

You can look at me,
but I wonder more
what you see.

Brown eyes,
brown hair,
barely more than
five feet tall;
my feet are small,
as are my hands;
my teeth are straight,
thanks to braces;
shoulders been broad
since I swam,
but my figure
is much less athletic
than it used to be.

I could look
at myself
and point out
a million flaws.
My forehead is much
too big for my liking,
my cheeks are too red,
my top lip is so
skinny it barely
exists,
and, if you ask me,
my waist line
could afford
to look a little more
like my upper lip.

My looks are far from perfect.
Not saying I'm hideous,
but I don't look
in the mirror
to find
America's Next Top Model,
or anything close,
at least not until
my face is perfectly painted,
flaws concealed under
a combination
of moderately priced makeup and
a rather crafty hand.

When I look,
physical imperfections
and inadequacies
stare back at me.
My overly expressive
light brown eyes
give me an
omnipotent glance,
and they beg me to
turn away,
to close them,
to put them to sleep
so that I can
see.

When I see,
it's like a whole new me.
I'm a human being
whose physical flaws
are diminished by
an overly giving, compassionate
heart,
a brain
filled of logic & curiosity,
a chest
swollen full of
endless giggles,
a throat
storing sarcastic words mixed in with
empathetic phrases;
down within me
I see
the woman
who still at times
looks and feels
more like the girl
whose heart has been broken
too many times to count
but still, despite her
womanly pessimism,
yearns optimistically
to love again.
Within me I see
a woman with confidence
and also insecurity,
ambition and fear,
tranquility and rage,
hope and despair;
I see dreams,
wishes,
prayers,
meditation;
I see a beautifully
complex soul
trapped in a world
that begs it for
simplicity and
conformity.

I guess when I look
I only get a glimpse
of the body
that feels the need
to be perfect,
to work out a little more,
to weigh a little less,
to fix her hair the right way,
and to dress in the right clothes.
The self-conscious me
who still fears being weird,
who cares what others think,
who worries if my parents are proud.

But when I see,
out comes the woman
who says
**** the status quo,
I can't be put in a box,
I'm beautiful the way I am,
and nothing stands
between
me
and achieving
my
dreams.

When I look,
I don't see,
but when I see,
I see me.

I feel the brim of my glasses graze my nose,
and I know,
even once I take 'em off,
my vision
is better
than ever.

Don't deflect my insecurities
Acknowledge them for they are real
Don't brush aside my inadequacies
I can't help the way I feel

Hugging myself close, searching for reassurance
Through tear-stained glass I grief strickenly see
Seemingly I've lost my tight-rope balance
Clambering up ever so desperately

May think I'm wilful
Because I often get consumed
Don't judge me unstable
Just dormant emotions exhumed

Place a palm against my chest
Between sobs, my heart beats strong
Laying my turbid mind to rest
As I whisper me the comfort that I long

Don't be afraid of me
I know I tend to get lost
Alone in my storm swept dinghy
Susceptible to the chills of frost

I can't control, I get carried away
With the dream I'm set to pursue
I can't curb or hold myself at bay
I'm weak because I haven't got a clue...

I'm uncomfortable  

And always tense
In observational
Desire
From my corner coffee shop
Spot.
Unnoticed,
I see simple embrace
One for which
my body aches.
My body breaks
I realize
I'm alone and
In doing so actualize my own fate.

People are aliens
Foreign and speaking a language which seems eerily  
familiar but forgotten
years ago.
It seems I am not getting
better at conversing
just daily Rehearsing
The same rhetoric
Stoic lows
recycled and recited
to a new day, a new ethereal face

Inadequate Inadequacies
Inadequately Inscribed,
,described and, imbibed.

Please, oh Lord,
Let me imbibe
before subscribing
to speak to you, me, every and anyone.


Send Help!
Send Anyone!

A person
to make my lips feel
a little
less caustic.
Casual conversation
by the wayside
I want what I had
Not what I can or could have.
I don’t want love.
I’d rather have a dog to put to sleep
than no dog at all.

Small talk is much more of the former than the latter,
small, definitely,
but I've rarely, ever, talked.

My favourite?
"How Are You?"
As if the true gauge of such a complex question
can be summed up in a random stop and chat.

My response?
"not bad",
or something similar no doubt,
but sometimes,
I feel like being honest...

honestly...

i feel like boo radley in a town full of atticus,
feel like i deserve no more than the back of the bus,
feel like every single word that i say,
is another cliche, just another cliche,

feel completely silent, scream with no effect,
hope to find a true meaning, it still hasn't happened yet,
feel divided, from this joke we partake in,
where every single victory, is simply, a fake win,

why is nostalgia the only feeling that's appealing?
back when inadequacies weren't worth concealing,
that's all i cherish, that's all i want now,
and instead i'm standing here, and you're wondering how...
am i?

“...How Are You?!”

when fate's gentle whisper turns into a scream,
and crashing down come all of your dreams,
a roaring tide from what once was a stream,
tell me, is everything as lost as it seems?

"when one door closes, another one opens!",
that's nonsense,
i'm staring at a one-sided peephole, hoping,  
that the people that said they would help,
and forgot,
truly feel how the hell i've felt.

...that's how i am.

Seriously, what's wrong with you?

What happened to the man who did not let words phase him

Or be brought down by an insignificant slur?

The man who bottled everything

and wrapped that bottle with the toughest steel.

The man who saw the light at the end of every tunnel,

Who smiled at everyone he meets,

Who saw the best in every single person,

Who believed in chivalry and love at first sight

Is he still there?

Did that bottle break?

Or is not dating a woman killing you?

Do you miss her touch?

Do the words of people who don't know you get in you skin?

Why don't you listen to the ones that care?

Stand up,

Speak up,

And believe,

Those are the words you once stood for ever so vehemently  

Open your eyes and gaze at all these questions

It's about time you answered them.

"I love you,"
I say, speaking those inadequate words out loud
only to watch them fall to the ground, useless at expressing how I truly feel about you.
You say you love me back, but I want to say
"No, you don't fully comprehend my meaning."
It's not just love.

It's wriggling up against you to close nonexistent space, forever trying to get closer, wanting to prolong moments into eternity, because being enveloped within your arms makes me feel safer than I ever thought possible.

It's reading a book about losing one's forever love in a car accident and consequently nagging you to start wearing your seatbelt and stop using your phone so much. I hate feeling like the nagging girlfriend, but god, I don't know how I'd go on without you, and no horror novel has ever scared me so much as that book did.

"I love you,"
I say, feeling the letters crumble under the weight I place upon them.

It's a sweltering night, a sweltering morning really, and my body is tattooed with spider bite kisses and bruises.  I smell of park grass and chlorine and someone else's sweat, my lips are chapped, swollen, my eyes encircled in crimson undertones.  The people on the street stare- I am blonde, a dead give away, slighter and taller than the locals.  Men are confused, women are scornful, police are helpless.  My legs cramp with the dawn as I walk back to the apartment in my hospital-gown green tunic, sobbing openly, hair tangled with twigs and dirt.  It's still dark enough for that, but too quiet.  A milkman stops his work to look up at me and whisper ciao in the most kind and gentle voice I have ever heard, especially here, and I want to throw myself into his arms and sleep and scar his white uniform with the black stains of my tears, though I restrain myself and nod, shuffling forward, shoulders slumped, no eye contact, his gaze a hand stroking my back like the father I never had but always wished for, and I cannot help but cry harder, though I try harder to restrict each sob until I sound as though I'm gasping for air, but I would rather seem asthmatic than week, rather be strange than pitiful.  It is always better to be unknowable, much more simple than openly vulnerable in my experience, though my experiences are drunken from the bottom dredges of a half empty glass, so truly I do not know if this is true, and and every day I understand Hamlet's letter to Ophelia just a bit more, because every day I doubt truth to be a liar just a bit more.

Still, there are some things I know, enough to be called intelligente by a man named Simone, whose eyes shone with solare during the day, but at night became dark and hungry.  I know now why my friend chose to fly off a building in Spain without his wings.  There is a disconnection abroad, no sense of security or protection, demons are awakened and restless, dreams colder, and more cruel; the heat drains one's essence, melting the glue that keeps us who are broken together.  I know that expectations are sad reflections of desires, shadows of my own inadequacies.  I know that I am afraid, that heaven and hell are not places but permanent conditions, that my head is the prison guard of my heart.  Blame and guilt come easily.  There are no distractions, just meaningless directions, and I seem to have forgotten those I brought from home. Here, I am concerned with physical threats, trauma that can be shaken off with a block's worth of strides, yet I cannot seem to lose my naked shadow between the buildings.  I thought I hid it well behind frozen gazes, but the mirrors say, no, no, they know you are all wrong, you foolish girl, you poor little lie, they see through you, they sense your fear and feast upon it, you ignorant child, you are as small as the motes of dust drifting through the beam of a forgotten projector, the film torn and tangled, the screen stuck on one frame

I should have stopped when the milkman spoke. He knows that it is not mirrors who lie, it is us.

Head shots like mug shot
selfies
Professing to the world their
desires to be seen like
gay barbie dolls

Green dots, I reply:
A collection of blue highlighted
selfies
of empty responses,
validating my
inadequacy

When I decided to accept
that I was gay and
cause a queer whirlwind into
the calm atmosphere that is my
family
I expected life to become easier

But as I venture into the world of
green dots and barbie selfies
I am reminded that
Gay
is not what stirred up
my hurricane of
Confusion
Insecurities
Inadequacies

It's all just me.

So you sate your inadequacies
With excuses and those poems
And you pretend that tomorrow you will be better
But you are unstirring from your heart
And the stagnant puddle you call your life
It is your air, what once was bitter

Complacence takes hold and you watch
That view from the window forever the same
Sunsets and seasons blurring in the horizon
One more hour, another sleepless night
An unfinished day and muted uneasiness
Is this apathy the only thing you rely on?

“Life drains my enthusiasm away bit by bit”
You complain, and to refuse reality
You firmly repeat it like a charm
But you know, one heartbeat away
One step further from where you fell last
Will crash into your illusion of calm

Numb your conscience with art
Devour everyone else’s talent
And take nothing but tears from their story
Leave truths to dent your steel façade
Yet bury yourself in denial
Safe, shielded, in your delusional glory

Bleeding heart, battering in its cage
Its screams drowned under ****** veins
It’s scary silent, your shell
You’ve locked down hard
Your defences caked with dreamland dirt
Too sturdy for reality to fell

Search like a madman for something
To ease the voice of discomfort
Try to bind it to a letter
And so you sate your inadequacies
With excuses and this poem
And swear that tomorrow you will be better.

I do not inspire your passion.
Maybe it is because you don't know
All that you should do.

I do not ignite your flame.
Maybe it is because I am not enough
To make your blood flow.

I do not satisfy.
Maybe I am not trying hard enough
To get you hard enough.

To Sleep, Perchance to Dream

Let me explain.
This poem is about sleeping, dreaming,
the failure of my inadequacies in poetry to heal.

Three years after its birth, it is exactly what I am feeling this day.
It is long rambling and you won't stay for the whole movie.


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Erudition is perdition,
dreaming in words, accursed,
death to the visionaries,
release from visitations
of over-staying, unwelcome guests,
Johnny Cash, Jesus,
Forefather Jacob, Bobby Dylan
and their whiny,
smug-smiled missives
on behalf of the
all knowing, dream invader powers,
who
just-happens-to-be-know-it-alls.

These guys,
sub rosa angels,
electioneering,
hand shaking  
you into dreams
that make you wonder              
unceasingly  

I have renounced chants n'
dreams that
wander                              
meaninglessly

so if there is no
repeal of the stupification
of the human condition,
just invent words that  fool
willful and mostly please
nobody

don't ask and don't tell,
then we can agree
that a life,
its peculiar
Hallmark Card of grief,
cannot be
disambiguated

yours is yours,
different from mine,
single poems cannot solve
multivariate equations,  
un-blow mind sensations
that circumnavigate my mind    
as I edge along the
borderline tween the
United States of self-realization,
and a State of Mexico
drug-induced, seductive and
self-administered pat down,
a colorless, tasteless, dreamless
evening in the company of
a rest-once-and-for-all,
sleeping pill

Repudiate yourself,  
privately you
hyperventilate,
but others willing to borrow
those surfeit of rapid
misunderstood breathes,
stored in brown paper bags,
that will be divided
most ingeniously by the
Misappropriation Committee
for wordy oxygen tanks,
desperate for refilling

Recant, Renege,
Renounce, Repeal,
Repudiate, Retract,
I herby foreswear
all previous poems, please
Return them

Back, send them,
so, I can end them,
desist any new arrival of vaniloquence,
direct 'em to  the trash box of inconsequence

My wrongful w-rightings
are now cashiered,
my cool is in mourning,
my plateau is flat but
upsided downded,
words drownded,
both sides now, spring silent

Tried to swim to safety,
to Spanish Harlem
but no hablo espanol,

In Miami, they done me in
for the crime of
insufficiently thin,

In Ghiradelli Square
they deemed me too blond
not 'ciscan enough
yet, in Frisco fairness,  
done deported me,
making me to choose
tween Los Angeles and/or
Orange County

So, poet poseur, where you gonna run too?

My better half sleeps,
my left half weeps,
so conditions normal.

Satan laughs,
offers me ***** or poetry,
knowing full well that having
foresworn, addictive wordmongering, liscentiousness
that a single letter
would stupor me into a
drunken poetry slam at
St. Paul's Church,
into Satan's collection box
of wordy sinners,
where lost souls, ex-poets,
prevaricate
vainly, in hopes
that anyone will let them
transubstantiate
in order to avoid their
expiration date
on Stub Hub

surrendered the master key,
turned in my ID badge,
opened inner sanctum no more,
poetry boy is ratiocinated,
peril dispatched, swear that I've
excommunicated the voices
determined to disintermediate

the compromise I've reached,
help is contraindicated,
ex-officio is my new grace state

please, devices decontaminate,
otherwise, poems disintegrate,
excoriate them, don't wait,
to disassociate'em, insufficient,
remove them from hard drives,
yank'em one and all!

let the diet begin,
no more food for thought,
no more dreams
wrought and recorded,
permit the ambient calm
of the still of the night
that engulfs,
to harmonize with the flatline
dreamless sleep that the
mind monitor machine
etchingly, quietly records

let hours of research
be rewarded,
by my imbibing the product of
laboratory pharmacological
fine tuning

***** S.,
what outrageous ego
let me suppose that in
mine own words,
I could improve upon
your lovelies,
with now bland homilies,
recitations of my anomalies

What id sexed my brain,
was I completely insane,
to imagine that I could
improve upon:

"and by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ache and the
thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to,
'tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish'd.
To die, to sleep;
To sleep: perchance to dream:
ay, there's the rub"

Finished: Nov 27, 2010 4:44 AM

Windows to the the world through which I see
Images of shortfalls and views of perpetual inadequacies.
Shut my lids ever hoping for a change in scenery...
But only pictures of emotional chaos, mistakes and uncertainties.

Visions I can't ignore and they can't be severed;
Like a splinter that's embedded but can't be retrieved.
Reluctant at first I wish to have them captured...
Capturing all the disorder, but have the beauty all sieved.

Beauty and light engulfed by this visual turmoil
From windows to canvas, I paint but with a sombre brush.
Vicious strokes represent the feelings that roil;
Devoid of pardon; sing of pressures that crush.

This brush that I use; I've taught it all too well.
It could paint even when running on the subconscious.
It never does relent, nor never will it ever quell,
It'll keep on painting the dark side of the senses.

My canvas just lays receiving the brunt of the strokes.
It lays there quiet; accepts it all without struggle.
Like fuel to a bonfire, it provides and also it stokes;
It lays there ready to accommodate the dust and rubble.

Again the brush finishes with its last deft touches.
Producing the same painting it's painted over and over...
They will never depict meadows with the farthest of reaches
But a portrait of me; staring mournfully into forever...

The last time I saw you
We were trying to blend orange into green
In a huge painting for a fund raising auction.
Surprisingly, I see you again in yet another colorful adventure,
In a dark room with bright blinking lights where
We gave 80's dance moves to pop rock songs.

Then we plunged into the night and let
Our laughter and high pitched voices pierce the chilly air.
We balanced our books as we hurriedly jaywalked
Through the 10 pm traffic jam.

Though the ads in the mall were right at our faces,
You pulled me to a big blue aquarium
To marvel at the goldfish and guppies
Staring at our shiny eyes the same way.
We tried to understand the math
On how our corals cost 3 times more than the States
Even if we have 20 times more species than them.
We couldn't, but we swore to each other we'd stop it.

And as we shared a glass
Of too much ice and no more tea
We fought back passion filled tears
When we told each other story after story
Of our government's inadequacies.
We argued, but finally agreed that
It's not over population, it's urban planning;
It's not poverty, it's inequality;
They're not imbeciles, just ignorant;
And our nation maybe unfortunate,
But our trust is not in fortune, but in grace.

Then as we bid each other goodbye,
Unsure of when will we even meet again,
I prayed to God that
If our school chaplain becomes the president
I'd like him to appoint you and me as the
environment and finance secretaries.
I thanked Him too because
Now for the first time in my life,
I'm not ashamed, I'm not embarrassed but
I'm happy
To be a geek
Because you are with me.

Oh' if I could speak the language of his atraction

With a generosity of exchange in bounteous metaphors

Yes and let him be the quality of my oppression

For there is a torture about my words when put to voice

They search for plausible reasons as is such cannot be found

And yet I have a trouble governing my generous impulses

Oh' the inaudible corruption that is my mind, hoping, wishing

Begging for a prosperity of possibilities that will vanquish tears

That I with moral perspectives should  bind a mutuality between us

Invalidating my inadequacies thus find a resolution not in artiface

But in a charmed and beautiful way that shall be the essence of love

Without a prodigality of thought, but each for each, in solemnity of kiss

“Don't you miss being in love?”, she asks.
I simmer, gathering myself  and my thoughts.

No, I don't, because I have not been in love;
Not in the manner I imagine it.
I have loved - beautifully, might I add -
But never have I been in love.

How can I have?
At my best, all I knew was to compel, persuasively,
someone into loving me -
the best possible way I knew how.
I revealed just enough of myself,
the beautiful of myself,
the parts of me that drew butterflies.

Hidden were the broken parts of me,
those which keep me awake, sleepless -
'til the moon kisses me goodnight,
in the last hours before dawn.

I am not, by any means, denying ever loving.
I have loved, blindly and beautifully.
All I have ever been good at was loving -
loving someone into loving me,
the best way possible.

But, all of their love was inadequate.
A love which always fell short of loving me,
the best way possible.

Love; inadequate:
Unable to express loving me,
unable to express themselves of loving me.

In turn,
I was slapped with sloppy efforts of loving me -
Vague inadequacies of love.
It was never enough, not remotely close,
to what I had imaged loving me would be.
It was short of ever arousing me internally,
short of wits to spiral me into being in love.

And so, how can I miss being in love,
when it has always been a feeling that eluded me?
How can I miss being in love, when in love -
I concealed the broken parts of me?
How can I have been in love when I was lonely, in love?

How can I have been in love,
when all I knew of being in love was to love myself -
by loving whomever loved the aesthetic parts of me?

Loving me has always been an infatuation -
an infatuation of the broken pieces of me,
coming together to create an illusion of a love -
an unsatisfactory love for loving me.

How can I have ever been in love when no one has known,
expressed, conjured the best possible way of loving me.
All of me.

Once more, up at the last hours before dawn -
awaiting the moon to kiss me goodnight, I tell her.

Yes, I have tried,
Sir Butterflies
O Butter Smooth and Red Samurai
I have tried to be carefree
like you both
like your eminent selves
flitting from one plant to another
not attached or fond of one
but coming and going as in necessity
I have tried
Sir Butter Smooth and Red Samurai
to be free of time
like you both
like your eminent selves
careless of the past
or what is to come
but still my mind wanders
into the inadequacies of the past
and the promises of the future
so that
O Sir Butterflies
Butter Smooth and Red Samurai
I am weighed down by attachment
and am pained by time
unlike you happy butterflies
merry and free
your life always in the moment…
Perhaps
Sir Butterflies
O Butter Smooth and Red Samurai
you should teach me…

I don’t know how to explain that here I love and love and love with all I am and everything in my heart but I am still, endlessly, not enough. I am the fire you forgot to put out and the words you left unspoken and eventually slipped your mind. I am trying my hardest and I am falling so fast and so high.

-

You keep things inside your head, you keep things inside your heart. Nothing makes sense anymore, but you know one thing - is that you will love even when there is nothing left to love and nothing left of yourself. You will gather the memories and entangle them together in broken figments of shattered time frames and convince yourself this was how it was meant to be, that you were supposed to be.

You will tell yourself that you will be okay even though you are not, and you will believe it.

(A.H.Z)

She spilled lengthy prose,
      believing words would
bandage her inadequacies.

Enrapt,
   I tussled
loose threads
     of her rhetoric
in a feeble attempt at intimacy–

not realizing
   Andromeda would love anyone
     who had pried her free from the rock.

The epiphanies of my failures
and the reaper of reputations
strip me to the bone
strip me to the bone, and leave me bare to dry
licked repeatedly by the incinerating
UV rays of humanity.
Care not for me.
Care not.
Hold me never.
Laugh, laugh and walk away.

Left to my own, my ingenuity.
I build myself, I create myself.
I unbrainwash myself!
Years of reconstruction.
I succeed to emerge a greatness.
An inner entity of amazement.
No one understands.

Failure?  I wonder..
Pain always lingering in the depths.
Inadequacies, *******.
I push past, deal with, and battle face to face.
To leave dismembered on the floor.
Step on it, stomp it deep.
plunge it down to surface again in light.

ME
hold me, love me if your able.
Never take for granted,
my soul, not of this life.
This place, these people, this society.
I am light.
Capable of so many inconceivable things.
I am light
I need only when I let myself need.
I need you, only if to see me.
The true me,
The me no one can possibly see.
I cry, I love, I feel, I am awakened!

© Crystal Erickson 11/24/07

The familiar complaints, the cozy ones.
Ambling through the hedges of grievance.
I never know what I'm feeling at any one time.
Usually more of the same. Bragging my inadequacies.

Winter is coughed from the addled coalsmoke sky.
Chimneys chugging ash. Clumps of duress.
Blake's choir of children lying in a heap.
Noontime streetlamps regaled in holly and poinsettia.

A ***** moss enters from the vacant lot, cautiously.
The homeless have been scraped from under the bridge.
Geese call and flee. The snow is flakes of ash,
the sun finally burnt itself down.

Disused meanings are flushed. A carefully wrought
vocabulary we have disabused ourselves of.
Crumbling monologue.
A new grammar forms. Light and Motion dances

from the screen. A panoptican of laughs and serenades.
Sometimes there is a magazine no one has a
subscription to. It is the digest of a human heart
dressed to the nines in thorns and flame.

Feelings fade like old coloured tattoos.
I have never been so afraid in all my life.
I want you to chase me.
I want you to need me like I feel my growing need to be near you.

We’re comprised of drunken nights and bathroom rendezvous.
Of my own inadequacies
Of my own insecurities,
And of the desire I feel in you.
I haven’t wanted anything this bad in longer than I care to remember.

Your laugh is the air I’m breathing,
Your touch is the beating of my heart (which I, more often than not, feel in my ears when you’re present.)

Chasing out your shape in the darkness,
Pressing myself that little bit closer,
Hyper aware of the distance between us and wondering if there is any way that we could stop ending and just completely flow together.
My hands searching for your every curve,
And I am drowning in them,
In the perfection that makes you a complete human being.

The completeness of it all,
The need is not superficial.
We’re comprised of lazy afternoons following bad days
Endless hours of cuddling and sipping tea and inhaling your scent,
Familiarizing myself with it as though it’s the most vital thing ever.
And with all the hype I’ve given you in my head it’s a glorious reality when you lean in to kiss me,
Lips moving slow and delicate,
Our noses brushing against each other with urgency mounting.

Its accurate to say you’ve changed the whole way my world spins.
The axis has shifted and I’m leaning in your direction,
My head spinning at your touch,
My fingers trembling across your naked body,
Memorizing the artwork that makes you who you are.

My bedroom floor becomes a place to scatter clothing and cups of tea.
It seems I’m never able to make it to the bottom of my mug when you’re controlling my thoughts.
I’d rather taste you over and over again.
I’d rather show you everything I’m feeling inside the best way I know how.
And it’s been so hard to just tell you what I’m feeling,
And I know you’ve struggled with the same things.

I am comprised of the way I want you for everything you have to offer.
I delight in that you are the first person in years able to cook me dinner.
I fall for your sarcastic tendencies and how you are the happiest person I’ve ever met.
I get lost when your smile lights up your whole face and the way you can never sit still.
I cherish the way that you push through the endless amounts of obstacles placed in front of you.
I relish in the things you say to me, the way you desire what I have.
I rejoice in the fact that you’re the most beautiful person I’ve ever laid eyes on
That you’re excited by science and books,
And the way you love that I don’t objectify what you offer me.

We are the two most awkward people I’ve ever heard of,
And I want to divulge everything you have yet to show to me.
I hate the way that when we’re apart the time passes like pace of two stubborn sloths, searching each other out.
I want to breathe you in, and hold you and kiss those luscious lips,
Grab a hold of your strong hips,
And never let you walk back out that door.

You are my feeling of contentment.
You are the only one I want to lay in my bed.
I don’t see a need for us to participate in the outside world.
I want to keep you all to myself,
Because I love the way when you sleep next to me you never let me go.
I have never been so sure of anything in my life.
I’ve never been so terrified by so much happiness.
I want to feel your breathing on my neck, and the beating of your heart against my ribcage.
I don’t want you to get up and leave,
As much as I enjoy the look of your nearly naked body striding towards the light from the window.

I want you, wholly and completely.
I want you for every single thing you have to offer me.
You make me the happiest I’ve ever been.

Woman child, man child, Kidadults
I hear your voices, I feel your pain,
I was pushed on the tracks you walk
I see the sorrows of the known and unknown days
the hopelessness of feeling insignificant
the destitutes of needs unmet, wants unattainable
the searing pain of the unsupported, the pitiful cries unheard
the anger of mediocrity, the stupefying lull of mundanity
that shaming feeling of feeling disrespected and unworthy

I can appreciate your rages and outrages
the compulsion to lash out, to hate, to get back at them
the frustrations that begets violence, the creeping disillusionments
the insecurities, the fears, the paralyses, the absence of stability
that pervasive feeling of inadequacies of minds unfulfilled
the crazed tensions that always sits at the door and gnawed often
the need for escapisms, to drink and live recklessly atimes
the pain that bornes rejections of cooperation with those others
the sheer horrors that make you think the world is against you

But I've been one of you even before I was made one of you
I come from the capital of Suffering, paid fees at Adversity alley
I too know what it's like to go hungry, to do without
Know what it's like to yell in frustration and bemoan my lot
while the wealthy kids swarmed around with foreign goodies
I know the humiliation being barred from class and school lessons
because my school fees were late in coming and being laughed at
but I had parents who gave tough love and bred worthy sons
and values to work hard, stand tall and respect your name

Don't look at others, be positive, be the best you can be
be helpful, be polite, be kind and fear your God but nothing else
you are a man, go like a man and never ever take what's not yours
Be grateful for what you have anf thankful for the privilege
Yes, I had breaks, but I stand knowing I earned from my sweat
and nothing was expected or given or taken for nothing
so Yes, I know suffering and hardship ain't going to break me now
No woman, I was bred to care for, love and provide, *****, they are not for ****** release, or comforter to abate my pain or strifes
Loneliness is nothing, I have slept in dark forest and quiet beaches
I have faced darkness and fears that would traumatize older men

Destroying me achieves nothing other than glorify inhumanity
there will always be talented people who seem to have more
these days the're few elitists only does who took opportunities
If you want to change the palaces, do a Megan Mackle
Be good enough to marry inside and change lives from within
Hating privileged serves no purpose other than reinforce them
You can bring the walls down from the inside better than outside
Hate destroys the haters, why court cancer when love cures all

Woman child, man child, Kidadults
I hear your voices, I feel your pain,
I have walked the tracks you walk
I know well the sorrows of the known and unknown days
I can talk the talk and walk the walk
I have done it more than any of you born in the West.....

I left with very little, expecting a week or perhaps two in the city, quick cash and then home to the sand of my beaches and the touch of my bed. It has been exactly two weeks and I am starting to say that I live here. There's an exhilaration attached to the detachment of a one-way ticket, I am a thousand people a day while being none, I can walk away from conversations without feeling guilty, there is not one person who cares enough about me to bother with my affairs-it is absolute freedom. Yet there is a loneliness that hangs on the hinge of liberation...a traveler has the world in their heart.  We cannot stop ourselves from stuffing our experiences inside, gluttons of the road with the horizon in our eyes. Sometimes, though, we lose sight of what we wanted all along and then begin to search for what we desire, which becomes blurred and tangled by time zones and climates and languages...our stomachs are always empty and our chests are always aching for the unknown.  It can break a person. I was on the bus back from East Hampton when an older man asked me why I was crying:
"I don't know",  I said, "I suppose I just realized that this city takes everything from you, and you must prove yourself to earn it back".
He told me what they all do:if you can make it here, you can make it anywhere
I turned back towards the window before asking, "when you came here, did you have nothing, too?"
The man nodded and smiled. Maybe he was lying, but he gave me 50 dollars and paid my cab fare. I hugged him goodbye and he wished me luck. I don't know how he knew I was completely broke with no way to get back to my apartment, but I cannot imagine the forty-block walk with three bags. There is a kindness in a fellow traveler, one more seasoned than we are, who will always understand what it is to be poor and hungry and tired. But we chose this life, I chose this life, when I stepped on the plane with no way back. I realized this as I was locked atop a rooftop in SoHo, watching the pink and blue of sunrise with champagne on my lips. It is okay to admit your inadequacies, to ask for help, as long as you appreciate the sheer genius of the universe. That, after all, is why this life calls to us.